Cracked Open Head
by Meelu the Bold
Summary: Ike, like an idiot, gets seriously injured. He has a series of frenzied fever dreams. Crazy stuff might have happened, but he's not sure, nor does he remember. Spoilers. IkexElincia, IkexOC, GreilxElena.


**Disclaimer + Warning + Wish: I don't own Fire Emblem, there might be some inaccuracies when FE10 comes out on NA, this is crazy shit, spoilers galore, liberties abound. Have fun!**

Mother stumbled through the jungle on thick, fat feet wrapped in a man's thick traveling cape. Her swollen leg-ends wouldn't squeeze into her shoes any longer so they rattled against her back on strings. She'd been walking since the Gallian border and a little before. Mother leaned forward, resting her hand over the little head she was hiding. Mother banged her chest on the medallion as she breathed in out in out with green fronds up in her face. She was sticky with humidity and sweat and she smelled the thickness of the air down through her lungs to her baby. She wanted badly to sit down and give birth to her son. If she stopped too long that was probably what would happen but Mother didn't know what she'd do if that happened. She worried this son of hers might kill her early on since he was so impatient. Never stopped kicking, not once. Mother clubbed a foot forward like a last strike of a snake that was squished with its brains seeping out. She saw that once. She propelled herself from the tree. Had to keep going. She was supposedly running, but her feet didn't have any skin on them any longer. No way. No way would her Something blame her, she was over ten months pregnant and ready to split wide open.

She pushed the special spot on her back.1 That special spot moved her up and she was crawling out from under the rock that squished her snake. Mother went all of five feet, urging her feet to make a ninth step and then a tenth. She couldn't make the eleventh all the way, she just slumped up against another good old tree and breathed heavy in air that wouldn't fit inside her tiny chest it was so heavy and filled up. She told herself, Elena you have to do this. You promised too many people to let them all down.2 You have to you haven't ever broken a promise. Not even a teeny one like going to bed on time. Well maybe one like that. Sweetling, you stay put for now. I know you're impatient. You're just like me, you don't want to stay still for anything!

But her son didn't feel like listening she supposed, because he kicked harder, urging her on. She knew it was a son because when he was born he was a boy—Mother didn't figure out any other way to explain it other than lucky guess. She wouldn't say that she just knew because she figured Mist would be a boy too and she was wrong. So she supposed lucky guess. Mother also knew that Ike was just a shy child for no reason other than he was and he'd grow out of it by the time he was five or so. She didn't see his sixth birthday or Mist's third. Anyway, he'd stopped counting after seventeen because the next number might be thirty-eight and take him by anything but surprise. It might have been almost three years or ten that he was talking to Shinon and he suddenly remembered the words to the lullaby that had in actuality been a galdr. The frantic panic to write them gripped him so he wouldn't forget. Almost a decade and a half since he'd heard them, forgotten entirely.

He couldn't write except for maybe a (small) word at a time and spelling was a foregone surrender. Reading was a little more forthcoming and figures were easy enough to do in the head, for instance 200 by 23 and a half was 4700 which was the going rate for 23 bandits and a guy who actually ran away so he counted for half. People's life was expensive to take. For the writing Ike called over Soren, who was more than sour to the point of completely bewildered and enraged, and made him, without reason, copy down

_The white birds have laid down their heads_

_All sleeping snuggled in their green nests_

_My darling, little and young, I am here_

_Rest, safe, and have no fear._

And

_The little chicks are singing:_

_Piyo piyo piyo!_

_When they are hungry_

_Or when they are freezing_

_Oh my! declares the Madam Hen_

_Should I let them in?_

_Goodness, I don't kno-o-ow_

_Piyo piyo piyo!_

And

_Ay ay ay, my beloved captain_

_Quickly come home when the war is done!_

_How I long to see you, and I wish you to know_

_That I haven't forgotten about_

_The money that you owe._

And maybe thirty-nine others that he suddenly recalled in perfect clarity. Soren complained about having to write while walking (impractical) but he understood that Ike rarely engaged in pointless frenzy and this time it must be important to him, to want to have thirty-nine lullabies and nursery rhymes written down so quickly. And there were more.

Moreover, it was like Mother was singing in his ear. When Ike and the others, Soren, Oscar, Boyd, Shinon and Gatrie entered the vicinity of the village, Mother was not singing, but when the bandits were routed she was singing all the way home. By the end of it all, Soren had written down exactly two hundred and eighty three songs3, each about four or five lines long except for the story songs of which there were fifteen and he had ruined a book of fire, which he said he was unskilled with anyway. He'd forgotten everything about his mother until then. Even Volke's story hadn't jarred this great deluge of memories.

Mother's repertoire for children's songs and nursery rhymes was huge but she knew other songs that she sang to her Something only and others that she made up on the spot. Sometimes her rhymes were according to her heavy Daeinish accent. Plum rhymed with pain in the deep bowels of Nevassa. They spoke language in a different way in Gallia. Kora's language interspersed with grunts and growls. Taught to find laguz beneath her Mother and Kora were fast friends; Mother made friends with near anything that passed her, if it smiled back. Kora knelt next to her, not half as pregnant but close to, actually—Kora being a big tigress, her bulk hiding her baby. Kora found her in the road two miles from where she had last touched the special spot, two miles her feet and her son carried her.

"How long have you two been sitting there?"

"Naught but three seconds. My lad is helping me."

"Mrrrr, you look ready to kit there."

"Oh, aye. But he's a good boy. He's carrying me as I'm carrying him."

"She's barely on her feet! Grrrgrrrgrrr!"

"Oh!"

Kora commented on something.

She then turned away and called for her husband.

"You have a husband?"

"Of course. Doesn't you?"

"I have Something similar."

"Come carry her!"4

At last Kora's husband heard her roars. Kora's husband was a broad shouldered tiger and he lifted Mother like a ragdoll and Kora talked to her about berries, feet and children. Mother told her it wasn't important. Kora's husband carried her through the brush, everything about him close or exact the same as her Something and she wondered where he was. Kora asked her where she came from, Mother said a place synonymous with death—not her but Something or baby. She could take it. Ashnard didn't want to kill her. Mother's water broke the instant she walked through the door, and spilled over the floor and splashed to the walls almost to the ceiling, just like when Mist saw Ike walking through the door and she was so shocked by the huge gash across his torso and a part of his arm and the blood over his face that she dropped her platter of supper which not only broke but spewed everywhere and all over the walls. It reminded Ike of Talbo's5 cracked open head. Mist's reaction was to scream at him, both for getting hurt and for making her drop the plate. While it was technically his fault that his mother went into labor like she did, he felt that he had no influence on Mist's faulty grasp of her cookingstuff6 and shouldn't have been blamed.

Mist herself began to scream about his wounds. Ike wondered why no one had said anything about the huge gash across his torso and a part of his arm and the blood over his face that made Mist drop the plate. Shinon said that he and Ike had just been talking about it, or rather, Shinon had been performing emergency first-aid on his commander just prior to Ike's frenzied recollection, and Ike also realized that suddenly he was not standing like he had thought, but on his side being carried by Boyd and Gatrie. Like how when Mother was carried to the bed and suddenly his memory of her—well, it went strange—hours later he was told he had passed out by Titania who in the same breath was also crying. She looked wretched but when he told her that she was so happy she kissed him on the mouth at least five times in delirium.7 Apparently, he had been near death. When Rhys entered the room she kissed him passionately as well, and then left the room. From what he could hear, she retrieved Mist. If she kissed her as well, Ike didn't know. He was in a daze.

They'd almost lost him like Mother almost lost him in the Marhaut. She couldn't have taken losing him, not through a miscarriage, not her first son, and not when Father didn't know a damn thing about how he was a father. Mother had kept her mouth shut. He wouldn't have left when she needed him to if he had known that she was pregnant. She hadn't been sure herself until her son had almost been lost—Goddess, she'd been certain then, because the thought of falling on the hard hard floor below and miscarrying her son had almost been as bad a thought as the shower-of-scalpels windandrain8 or the fact that if her foot slipped on the narrow ledge, about as wide as her bureau drawers at what was once her home, she would probably die as well as her son. Anyway, she had been cautiously singing

_The little baby on the treetop_

_Swings gently above the ground_

_Mr. Rabbit goes hop-hop_

_And brings the baby down._

Father couldn't hold on to her hand. He was a big indistinct but wonderful shape in the storm ahead of her, testing the rock. They couldn't use the bridge, nor the checkpoint. That would leave a trail. Once they hit a city they would have to change their names. Father's accent wasn't as strong as Mother's. He traveled so often that he had picked up the world in his voice. His back was a comforting sight, because squished against the black and fuzzy cliffside viewable only through her squinting eyelids and three headwraps she saw nothing else. Mother had a firm grasp on his traveling cloak. She was connected to it like her son was to her, so they formed a chain: Father protecting Mother and Mother protecting her son.

"Just

longer!"

"Wha

t!

?"

The windandrain ruined their words. Mother could hardly hear Father as she fell hard into the dark grey and lost him. It seemed to her like he was saying "Just a bit longer!" but she couldn't be sure. For instance, her son could also sometimes hear indistinct phrases and at times woke up feeling odd. For instance, Ike woke up once to the combination of sharp takeable9 pain, Mia's chipper voice offering him a basic breakfast of eggs rolled in flatbread or perhaps ham, and a sexual urge of such intensity he feigned more pain than he actually suffered to bark at Mia and hurry her out of the room. She was offended (by being rushed and snapped at for no reason she had witnessed), but he convinced himself that he preferred that. Mother was at fault.

Mother was fearless about it. Or rather, she progressed to fearlessness. Her new position allowed her a special rank amongst the other women but not special knowledge or possessions. She dressed as she had prior to meeting Father and acted and went about her daily life almost as she had before as a young medic. She knew every technical aspect of pregnancy from a doctor's standpoint long before she'd ever been so. Sometimes the others asked her how she and Father met, and she thought and edited the same story, more or less. With her hands folded on her lap, Mother recounted how her cousin always came to her when he was in Nevassa with an injury, let's say, or a cold or a headache or some such. Well, he was a very prominent warrior and good friends with Father or so he had been then.

Mother ran after Father in the empty edifice corridor and took his arm and wrapped her thin little sticks around it. She always teased him about being a big monster. Since she had just been talking about it, she asked if he remembered how they met:

"Yes, of course!

"Ashnard broke my finger in a match."

"That's not it. You were crying."

"Was not.

"Tearing up, maybe. I was not crying, Elaine."

"Oh, don't call me that. No one calls me Elaine."

"Elena."

"There we go. Anyway, you were 'tearing up.'"

"It's a normal reaction."

"What a weird monster you are! You were so cute. I liked how you kept s-s-stuttering."

". . . you were chattering the whole damn time. I couldn't get a word in edgewise."

"Mm, right."

10

"Did anyone see?

"We should go home."

"Yes . . ."11

The clearest went like that. Ike felt uneasy witnessing it, and all the others. He was uneasy witnessing it when it was he that was involved! The girlinthewoods for example. She said her name was Yala or Mala or something. Mother might have approved, she might not have. She hadn't lost her virginity until marriage, but once she did she never wanted to even think about finding it again. Would this have been considered losing it? No, more like trading. Just them out there, eighteen years old? Well, just last year anyway, Ike traded his virginity to the girlinthewoods for her life, just them out there. She wouldn't give him anything else, he would have saved her for free. She said, "I'm my own thing to give. See those dead fucks there? Well, you gonna get what they wanted. 'Cause I like you, see, and they were hateful. Aw, you're cute, the stories don't say that about you." And the girlinthewoods had been beautiful like heron feathers, kind like Sigrun and instructive as Titania. Just them out there, didn't stop him from feeling a little guilty even though she only felt all one thing. What happened to her? She disappeared. Mist had her suspicions about where he'd been—closemouthed about how it hadn't been Elincia, he told her nothing and she never met the girlinthewoods.12

Mist touched his forehead. She informed him that his fever was still high. Infection? Wonderful. She took the time to chastise him about hygiene. She made a fuss of the blood and wound. She touched his forehead, sometimes with her fingertips and sometimes with her lips. Incapacitated, he let her hold him up and complain about how heavy he was and try to feed him. Mother was much lighter. She cried harder than Ike ever had in his life though he almost never did. It was like early on, Mother had cried every tear that would have ever been in his body ahead of time. Father didn't know what had happened until she told him when she had given birth safely in Gallia. Though suspicious, all he "knew" was that she'd fallen—how far?—, and then suddenly it was her time, and she maliciously menstruated, and that it made her cry, cry hard like she bruised her womb menstruating so hard. She thought, my son is dead. My son is dead. She was so weak and distraught, Father made them wait for two weeks before leaving the shadow of the Marhaut. In that time, Ike didn't see Mother from the inside like before but hanging softly on her forehead or a million miles away.

At that time, he couldn't remember much. A lot like a woman, he thought, there was a creature there a lot like a woman, but not, with white wings. He was unhappy. He was weighted down—Ike felt sorry for him, he was a lighter-than-air creature supposed to fly and over a thousand womanly creatures were holding him still with smoke ropes. He was so violent in his emotion that he nearly killed himself. Through the film of memory, a violet haired woman in flowing golden robes and a black dress was kneeling at his bedside, a beorc woman, praying vehemently, thought the restrained person could not see her. Ike thought she might be asking for forgiveness now that he was older, but he couldn't have possibly discerned her meaning without having learned language, not without his Mother's more advanced brain.

Mother regained strength. She was healthier than Father even; it was her heart that had been wounded and that wound pumped poisoned blood to her fattening feet, swollen beyond walking. Ike woke up wishing he could walk and get a drink, but was just stuck thinking about it. Mia forgave him for snapping at her. He couldn't be blamed and he couldn't sit up so she hauled him up and he thought for two delirious hours about how he hated injury, narrating his displeasure to an audience that may or may not have been an orange blob Elin-Mia. He told her about being eleven years old, too, and finding out that Mist's medallion was for her only. Ike found himself saying that he had hadn't felt like mother had left him much of anything. He had forgotten her stories and her songs. Mist at least knew the melody.

Father found out one day. They stopped for a bath (for Mother.) As she was singing

_The blue sea in Reiva is so so cold_

_Just looking on it turns you old_

_What a thing that no one's brave!_

_The sea, the deep blue sea is what I crave._

She took off her clothes (hadn't seen her in the daylight without clothes for a long time) and her entire front looked big, her nipples dark as black cherries and huge. Her belly like a mound of snow that didn't melt when he put his red hot hand on, he said

"Elena?"

"Yes?"

"When did this happen?"

He asked like he had been uncertain and certain cyclically for many months. His face looked more like Ike's than Ike remembered, young as it was on the further side of twenty-five. Mother paused. The death had been temporary. Her son had come back to them when they'd found shelter in the hay of a farmer's barn for a week or two, safe they thought from Ashnard who had helped them and been Father's brother-in-arms. Their exhaustion mutated into something Mother liked more than being dead tired, although she couldn't have said where their energy came from. She had everything she wanted, except for normal feet.

"In Nevassa."

"The Goddess. It's a miracle."

That's hardly a miracle. I came back on my own. What would really be a miracle, Ike thought, is if you'd just get back to Gallia already so I can stop this. But he'd already been there, was there, in his own Mother's head, heart, belly, feet. The night the fever broke—his fever—he reached through the water to end it. Mother was looking down into water, weary, with a split rag of a man's traveling cape around her ballooned feet. She had her hand on his head through the membrane of her body. She saw her face—tired, her fat feet, her youthful face. Seventeen years old. She saw the face of a man who wasn't quite twenty but felt much older. Her father had been like that. He had suffered in his life, to get to where he ended up. He never amounted to much because of the aristocracy, but her Grandmother loved him like she would die and they consented to a real live romance. Mother felt lucky that her Something was someone she loved. She reached to touch the face in the water. It was rough. Ike recently had been denied the ability to shave.13

"Oh Goddess," Mother said, heaving. She held out a hand and pulled her son, born, out of the water.

"This is a dream, right?" Ike asked her.

"I don't know. You look so much like my father. And Gawain," she said. She sunk to the ground. Ike suffered a curious feeling with her, the feeling of being in two places at once.

"Are you alright?" he asked, kneeling by her. Without need of explanation, Mother's thin arms wound around his neck and she started to cry again.

"You're kind," Mother murmured. Ike could vaguely feel the movements of her facial muscles as she kissed his cheek.

"You're my mother, aren't you," Ike said in conclusion. The humidity of the jungle didn't touch him. He felt like this fever dream was less vivid, in fact.

"You don't know me?" she said, alarmed. She jerked away and up, Ike took her hands to keep her from—leaving him, maybe.

What had he done? Was this true, a dream? Suddenly it was hard for him to fill his lungs all the way and when he did it was the sea air that filled them. Mother's skin was sweaty and grimed in his palms. He convinced himself of its dreaminess and the feeling of reality wavered. Mother read his eyes. He didn't know her. This woman was beautiful, like heron feathers, and she was funny and clever and maternal. Ike felt injured that he had never been raised by her.

"Something happens to me?" she said. Ike couldn't bring himself to nod or say yes.

Instead, "Mother, I remember all of your songs. Even the long ones. And Mist, my sister took care of the medallion for you. Don't worry. It'll get where it needs to be."

If there had ever been a moment to weep, now would have been when it would have come unbidden. Still, there were next to no tears in his eyes, which meant his voice wasn't clogged when he spoke again. He wrapped her bony thin arm around over his shoulder and hauled her up so that she was hardly putting any weight on her giant's feet and began to carry her two miles.

"What's my grandfather's name?"

She stuttered, before answering. "My father's name is Ike. Gawain's is Ulric. Their wives, my mother Genna, his Isabella."

"Who else do I look like?"

"Um, my father. You remind me of him. Just the way you carry yourself. And then you have my eyes and my hair. See? We could both use a wash. Hmm, and your nose looks just like Gawain's. Crinkles the same way. My mother in law's mouth, too, she never smiled."

Ike grinned and began to ask everything that came to mind.

"To eat, what's your favorite thing to eat?"

"I don't know. Anything spicy, with a lot of flavor."

"Why is Father 'Something'?"

"Because we aren't married."

"You aren't?"

"No. But I don't need marriage to love him and my children."

"Mother, I think I'm in love with a girl. I don't see her anymore, but I just keep feeling guilty. I don't stop thinking of her. I don't know. I haven't told anyone this, not even me. She's brave like you. Braver than she thinks she is. She's so much like you, but I don't think she realizes that she is strong or brave or smart. She secondguesses herself so often. I think she's amazing. She had help, right, I helped her and the Empress, but she won a whole war."

"What's wrong then?"

"She's something that I don't want to be a part of. And she's pressured to marry. I don't think I'm ready for that, even."

"If you love her, and she loves you back, I am sure you can find a way. You should try to see her again. But you might find yourself making a lot of compromises—Gawain did for me. He didn't have to leave like I did. If you love someone, you may find yourself bending to what they have to do and you can only do your best. You might have to give her up."

"Mother, can I ask you another question?"

"I don't see why not."

"I always thought," he paused here, "I was born after you married."

Mother picked up the meaning. "No. Gawain and I are only engaged. Technically."

"Mother, I," Ike tried to align it in his head, but the confession was lumpy and unwilling. "I did something with a different girl. I don't necessarily regret it, but I don't know if it was right."

"We're only men and women," Mother said, since she had thought about this before and realized something key of it. "It's in our natures. Did you force it?"

"No. She wanted to, too."

"It was her decision, too, then."

"I wish I had loved her, at least."

"Well," Mother said. "You should know that the most special time isn't usually the first. My first time hurt me, even though Gawain tried not to."

"It hurts?" Thegirlinthewoods had been anything but hurt.

"The first few times, it might. It's tight down there. If a girl rides horses frequently or is a knight, it might hurt less." Mother had been a medic.

"Does it feel like anything?"

"Depends. I like the way it feels, but if it was anyone but Gawain, if someone forced me, I'd feel nasty and rotted. And anyway, there's a lot more to it than just intercourse."

Ike thought immediately of the one surefire way to send him to sleep; touching his back. Mother did it a lot, when she sat on a verandah with him on her lap. Titania took over, later, until he grew out of the afraid-of-the-dark stage. The only time he could think of when it didn't work was when Elincia started to rub his back out of gratitude and something that appeared to be playfulness; he hadn't wanted to be anything but awake and aware, and couldn't sleep after that besides.

"I figured. Mother, I also wanted just to say something—I—"

He wondered what he would warn her of. What would happen? Would she live if he told her to bury the medallion or toss it in the ocean or to hide it from Father? Or would he tell her about what it was? Or what Lillia wanted?

"—well, I'm the same child. I remember things from before in Nevassa. I wish I could have been your son longer, I had to try twice to be born and all I got was—"

Ike cut himself off by some unknown power, he could not say the words four or five years. Mother didn't realize this. She smiled, but sadly. Maybe she did realize. Ike had other questions, though they seemed inconsequential. Mother sang, instead

_Sweetling, soon, sweetling, near_

_Cry no more, shed no tear_

_Sweetling, the moon will soon be almost gone_

_Behold! Lo! The soft light of dawn!_

Kora found her in the road two miles from where she had last touched the special spot, two miles her feet and her son carried her, two miles from where her son had risen from the water. Ike looked up. Kora was tall and broad, with dark hair and a hiked up skirt. She stood leanly, though, nimbly. She had a wide wood panel face and hillock nose, three violet stripes across. Kora liked to spoil him and he roughhoused with her son until he had relocated to Crimea.

"How long have you two been sitting there?"

"Naught but three seconds. My lad is helping me."

"Mrrrr, you look ready to kit there."

"Oh, aye. But he's a good boy. He's carrying me as I'm carrying him."

"She's barely on her feet! Grrrgrrrgrrr!"

"Oh!"

"What's the matter?" Kora asked.

"My son . . ." isn't here, she finished in her head.

"He'll be fine if we get you to someplace comfy. Sytio! Sytio, you lazypaw. Get over here, there's a beorc girl here!"

"You have a husband?" Mother asked, breathing hard. She was used to chatting with her son now, and missed conversation.

"Of course. Doesn't you?"

"I have Something similar."

Sytio arrived. Kora dwarfed him to Mother's eyes, and she smiled at the comparison. She later realized that it was because Sytio was quiet and reverential. Kora yelled at bugs that flew into her soup.

"Come carry her!"

Kora's husband was a broad shouldered tiger and he lifted Mother like a ragdoll and Kora talked to her about berries, feet and children. Mother told her it wasn't important. Kora's husband carried her through the brush, everything about him close or exact the same as her Something and she wondered where he was. Kora asked her where she came from, Mother said a place synonymous with death—not her but Something or baby. She could take it. Ashnard didn't want to kill her. Mother's water broke the instant she walked through the door, and spilled over the floor and splashed to the walls almost to the ceiling, and Kora meowed shrilly.

"Sytio, get Dalma!" Dalma was the midwife.

After all that, Mother's son was born fairly easily, like she was simply painfully regurgitating something back into existence. The labor was hardly anything at all, other than her mindless discomfort. Her one concern for Ike, whom she named after her father, was when he fell and hit his head at oh seven or eight months and cracked it open.14

"Your fever broke," Mist informed him one morning at breakfast. Ike looked at her like he could clearly tell when he was lucid and when he was not and also that she was stating the obvious and also that she was being foolish and also where was food? Mist took to wearing aprons when she was at the fort. Her official position was Junior Staff Officer and Maintenance Chief. She called herself Head Babysitter Mist, sometimes.

"Morning, boss!" Mia said cheerfully. Ike raised a hand in greeting and hauled himself up to a more sittable position.

"Morning, Mia, Shinon."

Shinon was sitting, maybe drunk, in the chair in the corner of the common room. The fort was sometimes treated like a big house that one mismatched family lived in and other times like a real mercenary fort where they planned and trained and such. Ike groaned.

"Yeah, you haven't healed all the way yet," Mist said, amused.

"Thanks," Ike said sincerely.15 Rolf said hi.

Titania was in a long pink sundress and sandals. It was technically her day off Ike recalled, and she was sitting at the table with a beat up romance novel that had survived and an omelet. The novels that Titania, Mia, and Mist (and for whatever reason Shinon), procured from the city somehow circulated through the fort at least once before being put up on the shelf for general use such as kindling. For this reason, Father had never objected, so Ike saw no reason to halt the tradition. Gatrie and Boyd might have been outside. Ike relaxed on the makeshift cot they had created for him in the common room. Well everyone was still around.

Rhys examined and declared him fit to continue living, and that it was a miracle that he had not died. As Mist handed him her Magical Meatloaf, she asked, "Hey, Ike, what were you talking about?"

"What?" he said stupidly.16

"When you where all feverish," Mist said, sitting on the sitting-with-Ike chair that had migrated to his bedside. She put her elbows on her knees and her chin on her palms.

Ike was quiet for a while, consumed by the stress of actual thought after prolonged incoherency.

"Dunno," he said after a time.

"That's no good!" Mist said, cheated. "You can't remember?"

"Do you remember what you dream about?" Ike retorted, knowing full well that Mist never recalled anything but scary dreams. Besides, he rarely dreamed about anything at all.

"Oh, shush you."

"Hey, Mist," Ike said, picking at the blanket. It was coarse, but it didn't bother him. "Remember Mother's scar?"

"Huh?" Mist said, arching her face.

"Mother's scar. On her back. Where she had the tumor taken out . . .?"

"Oh! Oh, I remember that. It was about this big, right? On her back. Was that really a tumor?"

"Yeah."

"She told me that a spirit bit her!"

"Did she? Heh."

"Well," Mist qualified. "I was what, two? I'm surprised I remember that. Was that what you dreamed about?"

"Yeah, I think so. I just remember that part. She called it her special spot. Father told me that it was just a tumor her father had taken out when she was a little girl."

"I forgot all about it," Mist said nostalgically. "Anyway, Soren wants to know what to do with all the stuff you made him write down."

"What?"

Mist found the ruined Fire tome and showed him. The margins of pages were strewn with random words, in what seemed like an arbitrary order, all in Soren's neat script.

_captain_

_see?_

_Beloved_

_make him remember ocean sea ocean sea_

_deep blue thing means nothing to me_

_piyo piyo piyo! Plum pain_

_my darling white birds_

_when will you return to me?_

_You love me so!_

_soft light of dawn dawn dawn _

_brings the baby down_

_I hope you don't forget me_

_my love my love_

_sweetling_

_my darling bluebird_

And so on. Ike stared at it blankly, wondering what it all meant.17

**..0..**

1 Perhaps Elena is Branded.

2 Referring to Lillia and Gawain.

3 The exact number of days Elena was pregnant with Ike.

4 Speaking to her husband who has just arrived.

5 A man Ike has killed in exchange for currency.

6 The term Ike uses for Mist's crockery; all inclusive. He doesn't understand housework at all.

7 Ike is exaggerating. It was only twice.

8 In Nevassa it is "windandsnow."

9 In pain, he seems to make up words. What a lack of education. Endurable is a real word.

10 A moment of no conversation. What's happening here, I wonder?

11 And who says this? It's ambiguous.

12 The story he told her: I found a person lost in the woods while chasing the Talguards. They had a captive, so I cut down who was there and saved 'em and took 'em back to Achiris when it was light enough.

13 Personal injury compounded on the old family phrase, "If I'm going to have a knife anywhere near my face, I'm going to be the one holding it." This rule is gold.

14 Exaggeration.

15 He's pretty clearly being facetious.

16 "You eat so much meat, you must have a . . . meathead! Wha ha ha ha!" Thank Ranulf for that one.

17 The end.


End file.
